Starring: Maya Hawke, Camila Mendes, Sophie Turner, Paris Berelc, Maia Reficco, Rish Shah, Eliza Bennett, Austin Abrams, Talia Ryde, Cassady McClincy, Alisha Boe, Jonathan Daviss
OUR RATING: ★★★½
Story:
Netflix dark comedy directed and co-written by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. Do Revenge (2022) centers on teenagers Drea (Camila Mendes), a dethroned queen bee at a posh private high school, and Eleanor (Maya Hawke), an unassuming new student, who strike a secret deal to exact revenge on each other’s enemies.
Our Favorite Quotes:
'Rumors are not harmless little comments. Somebody says something in person, someone repeats it online, and then it just grows, and grows, and grows, until it follows you wherever you are.' - Eleanor (Do Revenge) Share on X
Best Quotes
Drea: In high school, they say the best measure of success is like the clique you run with, or the accolades you receive. But my metric is a little different. You want to you know how you can tell when you’ve really reached the top? When someone wants to destroy you.
Drea: [referring to the cupcakes with her face on it] Who wants a bite of me?
Drea: Trick question. Everyone wanted a bite of me. I know. So ominous. You’re probably like, “Why is she talking in riddles when her life looks perfect?” Listen, babe, in this story, nothing is as it seems.
Meghan: Do you want me to push her in the pool? Do you want me to light her hair on fire?
Tara: Oh, my God. Meghan! Why is it always your first instinct to light someone’s hair on fire?
Meghan: Why isn’t it yours?
Drea: If you haven’t already gleaned, my friends were born into this life, but I was more DIY. And before you judge me for caring about status, everyone cares about status. I just knew how to turn the dream into reality. In this moment, I finally felt like I belonged. I spent seventeen years meticulously curating the perfect life. And now that I had it, no one was going to take it away from me.
'You want to you know how you can tell when you've really reached the top? When someone wants to destroy you.' - Drea (Do Revenge) Share on X
Drea: I’m sorry. Am I being paranoid, or is everyone staring at me right now? And like not in a good way.
The Headmaster: Drea, we all have hard truths to contend with. Yours is that your peers have the luxury of operating on impulse. You don’t. The only way for you to get ahead is to be smarter. And I thought you were a girl who was smarter.
Drea: I am smarter.
The Headmaster: That being said, you did sucker punch Rosehill’s golden boy. Impressive, by the way.
The Headmaster: [to Drea] Today, you let your anger control you. From now on, I want you to control it. Channel that anger into getting what you want.
Drea: So much for believing women. That day, my life went up in flames, and there was nothing I could do. If I went after Max, and lost my scholarship, I’d have to kiss my future goodbye. I kept asking myself the same question. Why would he do this to me? Looking back, it was a classic Icarus story. I flew too close to the sun, so my boyfriend leaked my sex tape. I hated Max, but even more than that, I hated myself for letting my guard down.
'Hurt people hurt people, but I just don't think that applies to teenage girls. I think sometimes they're just evil.' - Eleanor (Do Revenge) Share on X
Drea: Peaking in high school is cringe anyway.
Eleanor’s Mother: [over phone] Eleanor, I am so delighted you wanted to go to tennis camp this summer. Dare I say you might finally make some real friends?
Eleanor: Oh, Mama, that’s very rude. What about Oscar Winner Olivia Colman?
Eleanor’s Mother: Your pet lizard is not a friend.
Eleanor: [at tennis camp] Well, it took me all of forty-five minutes to realize this was a huge mistake. I was a Billie Jean King in a sea of Maria Sharapovas, but my pilgrimage wasn’t for nothing. My entire life was about to change, and it all started with her.
Eleanor: Drea Torres. She doesn’t know it yet, but we’re about to become besties.
'Feeling alone is a specific type of pain, with distinct recognizable signs to the trained eye.' - Eleanor (Do Revenge) Share on X
Eleanor: My therapist, the beloved Dr. Gratch, says that hurt people hurt people, but I just don’t think that applies to teenage girls. I think sometimes they’re just evil.
Eleanor: [to Drea] The one who showed everyone that video of you. Erica Norman. She sucks. She’s mean in a way I didn’t know existed anymore. She’s like a B**chasaurus rex.
Eleanor: I didn’t watch the video, by the way.
Drea: Congrats. You’re the only one.
Eleanor: What happened to him? Your ex?
Drea: Oh, you know, what happens to every guy. Nothing. I’m the slut on probation, and he and his tiny little d**k get away scot-free.
Eleanor: They always get away scot-free.
'Sometimes you have to pretend to be someone else to get what you want.' - Drea (Do Revenge) Share on X
Eleanor: [referring to Carissa] It wasn’t that she outed me. I don’t care. Everybody’s f***ing gay. She turned me into this predator. No one would come near me. She destroyed me.
Drea: [referring to Max] I didn’t realize how much power he wielded. You know, he makes you feel so safe and protected, but it’s all conditional on you playing the role he wants you to play, which I thought I was doing, but I guess not.
Eleanor: We all love an emotional terrorist.
Drea: Yeah, they’re so fun.
Gabbi: You want a tour?
Eleanor: I mean, as a disciple of the ’90s teen movie, I would be offended if I didn’t get one.
Gabbi: Oh, if you get offended, Rosehill does have a designated safe space for that.
Gabbi: Alright, so over here, we have our Instagram witches. Allegra, their leader, apparently made a girl levitate at a sleepover playing Light as a Feather. So now she’s queen of the zodiac thots, and she’s a Scorpio.
Eleanor: Hot.
'Narcissists are too busy thinking about themselves to realize they're being played.' - Drea (Do Revenge) Share on X
Gabbi: The horny theater kids. Last year, they tried to mount a mostly white production of Hamilton. Lin-Manuel Miranda sent a cease and desist.
Gabbi: Rosehill’s royal court, the cream of the incredibly entitled crop. Be careful with them. They’re all as calculated as they are beautiful.
Eleanor: Feeling alone is a specific type of pain, with distinct recognizable signs to the trained eye. Drea and I, we were two wounded soldiers on the battlefield of adolescence.
Max: Dre, I just want to say how sorry I am for what happened to you last year. And to anyone of you who watched, or you shared that video, I sincerely hope you take the time to examine why you did that. So, Dre, it’s in your honor that I’m founding a new club, the Cis Hetero Men Championing Female Identifying Students League. Now, it is for all the men at Rosehill who want to do better. Be allies.
'Getting a girl's attention requires weeks if not months of work. Getting a guy's attention requires you walking past them once looking vaguely slutty.' - Eleanor (Do Revenge) Share on X
Eleanor: [referring to Max] He’s like way worse than you described.
Drea: I don’t know how I’m going to spend an entire year at this school.
Eleanor: I feel you. I talked to Carissa, for like one minute, and it felt like dipping my toe in Dante’s eighth circle of hell. It was awful.
Eleanor: I wish that we could like hire people to take them down.
Drea: What? Like a f***ed-up TaskRabbit?
Eleanor: Yeah. Someone completely unconnected to us. A high school hit man, or woman, or NB.
Drea: You’re absolutely right. They deserve to go down for what they did to us, but we can’t go after them ourselves. We should team up and do each other’s revenge.
Eleanor: Oh, you’re serious. Absolutely not.
Drea: Why?
Eleanor: Because I’m not capable? I can’t do revenge.
'That's the exciting part of getting to know someone. You're a mystery until you're not.' - Gabbi (Do Revenge) Share on X
Eleanor: I mean, is “do revenge” even like correct grammar?
Drea: Oh, I’m sorry, Schoolhouse Rock. Are you dragging my sentence structure right now?
Drea: [to Eleanor] No one knows we know each other, right? So no one will connect us to them, to each other. It’s literally perfect. With my brains, and your blank slate, we can get away with this.
Drea: [referring to Carissa] Don’t you want to make her pay?
Eleanor: I don’t want to make her pay. I want to burn her to the ground.
Drea: Woh. That gave me chills.
'Don't equate your worth to some archaic idea of what the best means.' - Russ (Do Revenge) Share on X
Drea: You’re giving off some serious Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction energy.
Eleanor: Glennergy.
Drea: Yes. You’re radiating Glennergy right now.
Drea: But if we’re going to make this work, we have to fix this.
Eleanor: No. I really don’t want to.
Drea: We have to do…
Eleanor: Oh, please don’t say a makeover.
Drea: A makeover! Yay!
Eleanor: It feels so problematic.
Drea: It is, but it’s fun!
Drea: Oh, honey, it is much easier to destroy a girl. Take your pick. Slut-shame her, turn her friends against her, prey on her vanity, turn her into a troll, exploit her darkest secrets. Make her radioactive, and no one will help her.
'There's nothing vapid people love more than making other people's tragedies about them.' - Eleanor (Do Revenge) Share on X
Drea: Now, dudes, that’s another story. For girls, our bodies, our choices, our thoughts are all policed by shame. Our weaknesses are their strengths. If they have a lot of sex, they’re crushing it. If we do it, we’re sluts. If they’re angry, they’re powerful. But if we show any emotion, we’re hysterical!
Drea: If men in general are hard to take down, Max is patriarchy incarnate. The ultimate manic pixie dream boy. Max has a meticulously curated persona. Rosehill is an orchestra, and Max is its conductor. Everyone loves him, which means he can get away with anything.
'I know it feels like hell, but you are never more alive than when you're seventeen years-old. F*** figuring out who you're meant to be. Stay lost as long as you can.' - The Headmaster (Do Revenge) Share on X
Drea: [referring to Max] I want to expose him. And to do that, we need undeniable proof that he’s a hypocrite. A fake-woke, misogynist m**herf***er. If we can accomplish that, he’s done.
Drea: [to Eleanor] You are now and for evermore the coolest, most mysterious student at Rosehill Country Day. I’m Frankenstein, and you’re Frankenstein’s bad b**ch.
Trailer: